Last week’s Sunday Times, under the headline “Turkish farmers ‘fathered the Irish’”, detailed how genetic research had shown the roots of the Irish race to lie in the geographical area of Turkey.

I remember reading some forty years ago a book (the name now escapes me) by Leonard Cottrell that spoke of an ancient people called the Danae (at least, I think that was the spelling) migrating at some stage from the region of Turkey and seemingly disappearing from history. Immediately, an association sprung to mind with the Tuatha de Danaan.

Some years later I was reading a book (the name of which also escapes me) from the library on Turkey and was struck by the resemblance between certain words of Turkish and certain Irish words that would have had a more or less related meaning. The only one that sticks in my mind now is oglum, apparently the Turkish for ‘young man’.

Of course, there was no proof of anything here, nor would I have been competent to make any claims on the basis of it even if there had been—just two signposts pointing in an interesting direction had anyone in the ethnographic field connected them and been interested in following them up.

Funny enough, the only other thing I remember from the book about Turkey was the description of the area between the Black and Caspian Seas as constituting on of the great marching grounds of history, i.e. a geographical funnel for the march and countermarch of invading armies over thousands of years. The author made the point that over the period of recorded history the region had known nothing more than the odd fifty or so snatched years of peace. And when one pondered the statement, one realized in retrospect the futility of human effort in the face of war upon war upon war.

But equally one also realized, especially given the limited lifespans of previous ages, that it would have been possible for someone to live out their life from cradle to grave in just such a lacuna of peace, and no doubt persuade themselves at the same time that things had changed forever for the better.

[The promised second part of yesterday’s mailing will appear in the next day or two.]